Dear Keiji Inafune,

Quit beating your little doom drum about Japan. I am a Westerner that is working in Osaka. Though I am in Japan, I have worked on products that are not aimed at the Japanese market. If anyone thinks the Japanese are not capable of dominating the Western market, they must not be looking at Nintendo.  Nintendo is the winner and undesputed champion when it comes to consistently developing high quality titles.

Treasure, Valve, Blizzard and few other developers who focus a small handful of products have similarly high quality:crap ratios, but none of these companies release nearly as many titles in as many genres as Nintendo. Sports, variety, action, RPG, plenty of genres that Nintendo invented by themselves.

Furthermore, Inafune, do you really know what makes Western technology really freakin’ awesome? Few higher ups in Japan really grasp what makes Western stuff awesome. Simply put, it’s the Western process. Frankly, I could give less than 2 yen if your game uses ambient occlusion. Deferred rendering is nice if it means lower loading times. I’m a simple gamer with simple values: the game must be fun and I don’t like loading times.

Japan needs to embrace what makes it Japan, and improve it with some Western technology. What I say is hardly original; in fact, this policy was mandated by The Emperor Meiji. Most Westerners know the “Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians” decree, but another major phrase which turned Japan into a world super power is “和魂洋才 wakonyousai” which literally translates to “Japanese Soul, Western Genius.”

If the Emperor Meiji was running a game studio, he would license each and every Western game engine and middlewear product. He would send Japanese to go become interns at Crytek, Epic, Valve and Blizzard.

You’d think that reminding Japanese people that the last time they embraced Western methods and technology, they would love to remember those days, almost 150 years ago when Japan went from rinky dink island nation to having one of the most modern and powerful Naval forces at the time. And that this would be an easy way to convince them to modernize again.

I think that if Japan was to do a Meiji Video Game Restoration, they could make what they want to and remain profitable. Their products would be easily localizable for the strong niche of people who like Japan’s quirkier games. Rapid iteration would help them increase the approachability and mass market potential for their more main stream products.

A mix of Nintendo’s incredibly critical self-evaluation, willingness to find the fun and drive for polish with high quality Western tools to make executing the aformentioned qualities efficient, then Japan could potentially be #1 again.

Under Lock and Key

Ahh unlockables. Lately, they seem to be some sort of mandate for a modern game. People expect more game for their dollar, There is nothing right for all games, but there is something right for yours.

However, I know what I like and don't like and can give a reason why. I like ending on high notes so might as well get the bad out of the way first.

Unlocking Multiplayer Content in Single Player. Lots of it.
Super Smash Brothers Brawl, I am staring directly at you. Bring your copy of the game over to a friend's house since they have a nicer TV? I suppose Wiis are not that heavy, but still. I can hear the cries of "we put all this time into making single player, it would be a waste to not make players play it! No, to the eyes of players, slogging through a single player mode for something with multiplayer as a main draw is a pain in the butt.
Unless you are really riding on DLC purchases in the future, do you designers really care about how we enjoy your game as long as wel purchase it?

Practice is open for everywhere except needed.
In order to unlock practice mode for a difficult stage, you have to beat it. Where the heck is the logic in that? In the case of Touhou, practice helps you earn more lives to hopefully pass the stage you wish you could practice…But for a game like F-Zero where performance on tracks is entirely independant of each other? Why? The whole notion of practice being a privlidge to earn seems outlandish.

Difficulty modes. Barking up a wrong tree to begin with…
I can sort of understand this. Designers with set difficulty modes are deathly afraid players accidentally make a game too difficult and discouraging the player forever. I think Soren put it best in this post.  I think Soren is really onto something with orthogonal challenges. Especially when you can control them, as mentioned in Desktop Defense. Also, difficulty modes don't necessarily ramp up/ramp down all the things a user finds hard.
If God of War eliminated or simplified the quick time event button sequences, I would gladly jack up the attack power and HP of the enemies. Those are not the problem by far!

Now, what do I like?
Multiple ways to unlock.
I would never have gotten all the extra content in Panzer Dragoon Orta if it was not for the play-time unlock. Even though I played the ever loving 20 hours to unlock the Box Game option, I am glad I did. I would have never beaten the game with a 90+% shot down ratio, accuracy on the maximum possible difficulty setting during this lifetime so I am glad that was not the only way.

Can I get it all at once?
Like, one single playthrough and I can get everything. Games are lucky to get 1 complete play. I really resent games that try to get me to go through mulitple times when each play is going to be at least 70-80% the same darn content. Mheh. Really, I am bad about completing games as is, but I can make an exception for this if given a New Game + option. A good example of New Game + would be starting over without losing levels, items, other earned goodnicks. Sure, the first portion would be piss easy, but the player has beaten the game laready. Letting them waltz right through the opening portion is hardly detremental.

Unlocking things together.
If I can unlock something multiplayer by playing multiplayer, all the better. The game just feels so darn encouraging that way.

I will continue this at another time. Thank you for reading.

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Now I’m in Osaka…

I successfully completed my relocation to Osaka. The move itself was kind of worrisome at times given the tight schedule I had for picking a place and packing up. I actually had to pay a penalty for moving out of my old place early.

The well known blog, Japansmanship has a very good guide to getting a place in Japan, the scam that is Shikikin and Reikin, etc. Another dirty little trick is that few apartment agencies will post their really sweet deals on their websites. If you want some of the best deals which tend to include ZERO scam money(what I will now refer to Shikikin and Reikin as) plus some very reasonable rents relative to what you see advertise online. If you are DEADLY serious about relocation, you should go to the area you foresee yourself living at. You should go to the nearest train station and snoop out what deals the local rental agency offices have posted out front.

Take that trip out, it'll pay for itself so quickly it's not even funny.

Osaka is not as convenient as Nagoya to me. I mean, stuff is just so spread apart. At least, all my favorite places to eat and shop were concentrated around Ossu(which had all sorts of eclectic and nerdy shops.)  Osaka's subway system also feels like a much more irritating system to navigate; it really needs to incorporate the Loop Line into its service, but no, that's JR.

My morning commute is atrocious. I'm surprised my poor spine has survived this much bashing. It's not quite sardine can but I've been surfed a few times. I am on the Central Line and no matter where you go, usually something called the Central Line is bound to be busy. Strangely enough, my trip back home isn't nearly as horrible.

I really love my new workplace. Sadly, I'm a contract worker but if the rest of the year goes like this week, I think I'll findally have found a place to really build a career. 

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XNA Indie Game Sales

It seems like this venue has potential! I MAED A GAME WITH Z0MB135 looks like it's doing pretty well. For just a dollar, it's a highly entertaining value. I'm glad I bought it!

http://www.gamerbytes.com/2010/01/indepth_xbox_live_indie_games.php

I also want to share a game a friend of mine has made and posted on XNA. The reviews and buzz are really really good!

http://www.soulcastergame.com/

Congratulations, Ian!

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Most piracy studies are bogus?

That's what the Government Accountability Office asserts! I mean really. How many people who pirate the game really would buy it?

I wonder if most companies inflate software prices because they figure most users are going to pirate their software and so they will just soak the living daylights out of large companies and such? Why don't they just lower the price so more people can afford it?

That exact gimmick has worked brilliantly for Systemax Software, the creators of Easy Paint Tool SAI. This program sells for 5250 JPY which is about US$55(as I write this, the exchange rate is around 90 JPY = 1 USD.) SAI is selling like hot cakes. High school and college kids, a group that my anecdotal evidence suggests to me as the top pirating demographic(impatient, financially poor and technically savvy) can afford this. And it seems like they're buying it. Even at this low price, there are bound to be pirates(especially in areas whose currencies are worth less than dirt to the almighty-for-now JPY.) 

SAI certainly has its limits and it doens't have a lot of the customizability/features of Adobe's image creation programs which sell for thousands of USD or Painter(around 600 USD.) However, for a really basic, fun and easy to use program for the non-professional user? I find SAI to be much better than Photoshop or Painter for most things and most of my favorite artists do a majority of their work in SAI then touch up their works in Photoshop.

I certainly haven't unlocked all the potential that SAI has, but I've easily gotten my 5250 JPY's worth of joy out of this program. Probably more. Sure, there are plenty of free programs out there like Pixia, GIMP and Paint.net(which I use quite often!) but SAI has managed to accomplish a rare feat: I feel like I got something worth my money.

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A great read…

I came across Jamie Madigan's "The Psychology of Video Games" blog today and wow. Nicely done! I've had a bit of training myself but my credentials pale to this author's. How I managed to remember a lot of the neurological garble behind classical conditioning and how anti-depressants are supposed to work. In theory.

A lot of that pertains to video games. Especially conditioning. Go read it! r

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The 4 Fingered Issue

Japan does have content-related sensitivities. Yes, it's a nation notorious for being politically incorrect but it has its own issues within its borders that it does abide by. Most notably, characters with 4 fingers are considered a very nasty slur towards Japan's long oppressed "untouchables."

If you wanted to call someone "human pollution" just hold your fingers like the Left4Dead logo. Blood and gore was not the reason for censoring the cover, but you would not release a game in America with a zombie hand that ONLY had the middle finger standing up.

The 4 fingers represent the 4 legged animals the burakumin are associated with handling, primarily cattle. Until the Meiji era, Japanese people did not eat beef for religious reasons as well as practicality(the land and grain needed to raise beef simply wasn't available on a large scale in Japan way back when.) Kobe Beef's long tradition was held up by some small, heretical cults in the mountains. How The Simpsons got around this is beyond me because just about every other 4 fingered individual has had to change. Even works produced within Japan(most notably Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z.)

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